Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Handover cheques and house insurance

Luckily I had a day off work today, as I spent most of the day on the fax & phone. Most of that time was spent on hold, waiting for Heritage to sort out their issues - anyway, the good news is, at 4:50pm I was finally able to log on to our account correctly and get the right amount drawn out to my other bank account for a bank cheque to be prepared! Still a bit peeved that things weren't working last night, but because this final payment is a little tricky to organise maybe that's why things weren't going smoothly.

Also called AAMI to organise insurance on the new house. Interestingly enough, the original insurance we paid was based on a 50 year old weatherboard/asbestos cottage that was lucky to be 10 squares.

And with our new 43 square brick veneer 2 storey house, the annual insurance premium increases massively... by $41. I guess not many houses burn down nowadays, so the risk of the insurer actually having to pay to rebuild our house is almost zero. Also added on contents insurance; haven't calculated what the actual content value will be, so will recalculate and re-insure contents at the end of the year.

Been planning to get our superduper home alarm with video surveillance/recording, mobile notification and internet remote monitoring installed once we've settled in. Sorry - not giving away any more details on this for obvious reasons! But if someone drops a coin on the footpath in front of our house in the middle of the night, we'll be able to tell if it's heads or tails!

Stopped by the house today, and noticed the overflow has been drilled into the rainhead. It was suggested to hide it around the side of the rainhead so it wouldn't be visible from the street or side of house, which was a good idea.,

Getting superexcited about handover now, not long to go! I even bought a shower caddy thing today - the plan is, Tina gets exclusive use of the ensuite shower (and niche!) while I use the bathroom shower; at least for the first 3 months, so we can see if there's any leaks or problems that need to be fixed at the end of the 3 month maintenance period.

Stair guy called me today to confirmed he's booked in our job for after handover - it's 3 solid days of work, with the first day being 7am to 5pm for preparation, taping, sanding and hopefully the first coat of stain. Given the amount of hours of work involved, his quote actually seems quite reasonable now - so we're just hoping the final result will be good! Will also need to buy some small pots of our wall colour - Dulux Natural White - so we can touch up, or repaint walls where the stain will run. Or maybe change the walls adjacent to the stairs to a feature colour, depending on how much repainting is required.